By Michael Macleod-Ball, Chief of Staff, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:31am
Only a few short weeks ago, the so-called Senate Gang of Eight – four Republicans and four Democrats committed to producing a bipartisan immigration reform bill – released a bill exceeding 800 pages representing work dating back to November. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee convened for the first day of mark-up – a process whereby all committee members have the chance to offer amendments to the bill before it proceeds to consideration by the full Senate.
Most reports on immigration focus on Latino workers and the southwest border. However, there are many faces and backgrounds of American immigrants, and the breadth of obstacles created as a result of our broken system are far-reaching. This week the Congressional Black Caucus ("CBC") and Howard University hosted a compelling discussion on immigration that highlighted the reasons why immigration is important to all communities, and is particularly relevant to Black Americans and all communities of the African diaspora.
Imagine that you are a lawful resident married to a U.S. citizen serviceman who is deployed overseas, and you are looking for a job to help support your family. You find one, but unbeknownst to you, your employer, aiming to expedite the hiring process, checks the "citizen" box on the application, a box that you correctly left blank. After audit, you are accused of making a false statement of citizenship status, which could provide grounds for mandatory deportation. Imagine that the allegation is never substantiated and you are never given the opportunity to explain the circumstances, but you are banished from the U.S. and from your family. Well – you don't have to imagine all this since it's a true account shared by Margaret D. Stock, Lt. Col. (Ret.) and counsel at Lane Powell, at a congressional briefing organized last month by the ACLU. Her client was forced to return to her country of origin and separated from her husband while he put his life on the line for the freedoms we enjoy.
By Michael Tan, Staff Attorney, Immigrants' Rights Project, ACLU at 10:18am
This week and next, the House and Senate will hold hearings (including this one today) to address the reported release of between several hundred and several thousand immigration detainees from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") custody. Although complete information about the releases is not yet available, ICE's justification that it had determined these individuals could be "placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release" raises a fundamental question, posed among others by Secretary Janet Napolitano herself: why were these individuals detained in the first place?
By Laura W. Murphy, Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:44am
Watching President Obama take the Oath of Office four years ago was a historic moment I will never forget. I remember meeting him when he was an Illinois state senator...
As families get together this holiday season, we thought we’d share one wish for the New Year: an end to a government policy that tears thousands of these families apart.
We’re talking about the Obama administration’s harsh immigration enforcement regime, which has led to more than 200,000 parents of U.S. citizen children deported in just the last two years.
By Amshula Jayaram, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:07am
Last week, nearly four years after President Obama closed the CIA’s Detention, Interrogation and Rendition Program, the American public is one step closer to learning the truth about a program that sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects. To date, it has remained shrouded in secrecy, tarnishing our international reputation and severely damaging our nation’s security. Under the leadership of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has voted to adopt a 6000-plus page report, based on an analysis of more than six million pages of CIA records, detailing the findings of the committee’s three-year investigation into the program. We urge the committee to publicly release the document with as few redactions as possible.
On Monday, “Hardball with Chris Matthews” on MSNBC featured an interview with former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, and the discussion turned to immigration. Matthews asked Crist about his views on immigration enforcement and said that part of being a Democrat (Crist’s new political party) is being weak on enforcement.
By Tyler Ray, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:07am
The post-election immigration policy focus has rightly been on the pressing need to establish a path for aspiring Americans to become full members of their communities.
However, one of the most dire aspects of the immigration system is the ongoing crisis in mass immigration detention. Detained immigrants face widespread abuse and denial of basic rights, at enormous taxpayers’ expense. The number of detainees is unnecessarily high and must be drastically reduced.
As part of Detention Watch Network’s Expose and Close campaign calling for the immediate closure of the10 worst Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, the ACLU and its allies have sent a letter to President Obama urging him to take these vital first steps toward reforming a detention system where immigrants suffer in deplorable conditions.
